Long v. Short

Since 1912 Arizona has had a law prohibiting freight trains of more than 70 cars from passing through the State. Thus the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, as their long strings of refrigerator cars approached the Arizona border, had to split them up to cross the State. In 1929 the two roads estimated that the law was costing them $1,000,000 per year, started court action to have its enforcement restrained. In due time a U. S. District Court gave ear to their plea, finding the law useless except as a "make-work" measure and interfering with national control of interstate commerce.

Bills limiting freight trains to 70 cars or a half-mile, sometimes also restricting passenger trains to 14 or 16 cars, have been introduced in 29 other States, always strongly backed by organized railway labor. The Legislatures of Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, California passed them. In California, however, the measure was killed by a Governor's veto; in the other States the laws were found unconstitutional by Federal courts.

Every year since 1933 the four railway brotherhoods (trainmen, conductors, engineers, firemen) have got 70-car limit bills introduced into Congress. Spearhead of the drive is amiable but persistent George M. Harrison of the Railway Labor Executives Association, whose favorite thesis it is that railroads would have less trouble bearing the financial brunt of improved labor conditions if they had not piled up such huge funded debts while paying juicy dividends to stockholders. Last week for the first time a 70-car bill, introduced by Nevada's McCarran, was passed by the U. S. Senate, without a record vote. The Senate sent it to the House, where a parallel bill was marking time in committee. Observers were uncertain just how favorably the House would view the bill, but were agreed that the 70-car measure was in a better spot than ever before in its legislative history.

Average length of all U. S. freight trains is 47 cars. But trains longer than 70 cars are the rule in large homogeneous shipments: produce from California and Florida, coal from the Allegheny fields to the coast. The Norfolk & Western, the Virginian, the Chesapeake & Ohio find it possible to operate 120-car coal trains with a single powerful locomotive. These super-engines would represent a capital loss if deprived of their prime function of pulling long trains. The roads affected by the 70-car proposal figure that it would cost them $90,000,000 per year. The Brotherhoods claim that considerations of employe safety make it necessary. They say that hand signals cannot easily be seen from end to end of long trains, that air-brakes tend to lose their effectiveness, that there is danger from slack surges and buckling.

The railroad managements, more alarmed this year than ever, retort that the 70-car limit, like the proposed "excess crew" law, is a bald-faced, work-making scheme, and that talk of increased danger on long trains is twaddle. The Transportation Association of America declares that since 1922 the U. S. roads have spent $8,000,000,000 modernizing their equipment and rights of way. much of it expressly for handling long trains with safety. Train lengths have increased in recent years but employe casualties have decreased. In 1923, when freight trains averaged 40 cars in length, crew casualties numbered 36,238, but in 1935 with train length up to 46 cars casualties were down to 5,996. The Duluth, Missabe & Northern R.R. in Minnesota operated almost 7,000 trains of more than 70 cars over a period in which not a man was killed, a performance for which the D. M. & N. received the Harriman Silver Medal Award.

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